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Van Kasper Spiro | 23-03-2014 | | (0) reacties

#LSCon review: 70:20:10, agile, mobile, serious, performance and ecosystems vs “my clients want 1990 eLearning”

My recap of the whole conference is summarized in the title. I attended great presentations on 70:20:10, agile development, mobile (TinCan), serious elearning, performance support and learning ecosystems, but the gap with the audience was huge. When we were just talking before the start of a session, someone said: “I get all this and I want to do it, but I’m also getting frustrated because my clients want 1990 eLearning”. That really says it for me. We do have to move away from courses and into performance support, we have to grow ecosystems and the the formal learning that we create must be of a higher quality (applying the 22 rules of the serious eLearning manifesto). But:

• The clients (both internally and externally) do not get this
• The tools are not really in place and the IT department is not helping
• The methods and approaches are complex
• The learning departments are not integrated and aligned with the business
• The skills and knowledge of the instructional designers are still focused on formal learning
• et cetera

My conclusion is clear. The problem is not that we don’t know where to go, but how to convince the business (or clients) that we need to do it differently. And that way getting the budgets to move in this direction. The other how is: how to do this, where to start? There is a lot and especially on a conceptual and technical level it is not easy. So if you get how important TinCan is you need to be able to download and install it, connect it into your learning and working process and then you you still end up with an xml database that doesn’t have any reports.

Illustration of The Skhy bus by designer Alan Monteiro

Let me use a metaphor: I attended sessions where people are telling us about a new way of transportation that solves all current problems like pollution and traffic jams. They are also telling us that we are stupid that we still drive a car and stand in traffic jams everyday. But for me as a car owner and driver I can believe in this promised dreamland but what to do to get there? There are no new roads, improved gas stations, vehicles of the future and other facilities that allow me to make this step. So in fact it is a challenge to all thought leaders and vendors to translate and build this new infrastructure and vehicles and make it accessible and easy to the driver. As a vendor I learned some serious lessons that I can and will apply in our products, making it possible for the “audience’ to make that first step and start making use of this great new world that is emerging.

Other post about LSCON caps of: Day 1, day 2 and Day 3

Kasper Spiro